Latest news with #John&Paul:ALoveStoryinSongs'
Yahoo
14-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
How this one ‘pivotal' Beatles song made John Lennon overly jealous of Paul McCartney: author
When Paul McCartney wrote 'Yesterday,' it was a new day for The Beatles — and especially for his relationship with John Lennon. The 1965 chart-topper signaled the beginning of a new creative chapter for him and Lennon, forever changing the dynamic in the duo. 'Paul writes this incredible song. He can't actually believe that he's written it,' Ian Leslie — author of the new book 'John & Paul: A Love Story in Songs' — exclusively told The Post. 'And it's kind of this pivotal point, because Paul realizes, 'Wow, I've got superpowers.' 'Obviously, he'd written some amazing songs already, but John had still been kind of creatively dominant up until around that point, and this is really the point when Paul's talent really takes off … It's finally undeniable that Paul's songwriting and performing talents are the equal of John Lennon's.' All of a sudden, this sentimental ballad — a departure from The Beatles' previous work — had turned McCartney into the alpha Beatle. In fact, 'Yesterday' even seemed to mark McCartney for solo stardom. 'It was a song that he performed and recorded without the other Beatles,' said Leslie. 'When they're onstage and they perform it, the others literally go off stage, and he's just there in the spotlight by himself. So it was kind of a thing for the rest of the group — and for John in particular.' And that played right into Lennon's insecurities and abandonment issues. 'He was always worried that people that he was close to were going to leave him because they had when he was a kid,' said Leslie. John's mother Julia left him to live with her sister Mimi for much of his childhood before dying at 44 when she was hit by a car in 1958. Meanwhile, his father Alfred was also absent for most of his youth. 'I think 'Yesterday' really triggered his insecurity that Paul may up and leave and become a solo star,' said Leslie. 'I don't think Paul was ever going to do that, but I think John worried about that.' It led to Lennon becoming increasingly jealous and even bitter about McCartney's 'Yesterday' triumph. 'He became slightly obsessed by 'Yesterday,' ' said Leslie. 'He would be mean about it, say things like, 'Well, I'm glad I didn't write that one.' But then he would always be thinking, 'Can I write something that's as powerful as 'Yesterday?'' In fact, Lennon's obsession with 'Yesterday' continued even after The Beatles' breakup in 1970. 'So he writes 'Imagine,' he plays it at a piano for his friend and he goes, 'So what do you think?' ' said Leslie. 'And his friend is like, 'Wow, that's amazing, obviously.' And John says, 'Yeah, but is it as good as 'Yesterday'?' It just became this kind of scab that he was picking at.' Leslie — whose 'John & Paul' book traces their relationship through their songs — believes that it goes back to when a 15-year-old McCartney met a 16-year-old Lennon on July 6, 1957, when the latter was playing with the Quarrymen at St. Peter's Church in the Liverpool suburb of Woolton. 'Paul had joined John's group the Quarreymen, but it was John's group, and John was older,' explained Leslie. 'And John was still dominant in those early [Beatles] albums.' And when the two made an early pact to share songwriting credit no matter who wrote the tune, it was Lennon-McCartney, with Lennon's name first. 'They were teenagers when they made this decision, and then they had to kind of make the decision again, more formally, when they were just on the brink of fame,' said Leslie. 'They were so close, and they effectively were able to kind of put their individual egos aside and say, 'Whether or not it starts with Paul or it starts with John, a John song or a Paul song, it's not that important. In the end, what's important is that we do the best songs we can.' And that was a remarkable thing.'
USA Today
08-04-2025
- Entertainment
- USA Today
Biggest Beatles revelations in 'John & Paul: A Love Story in Songs'
Biggest Beatles revelations in 'John & Paul: A Love Story in Songs' Show Caption Hide Caption Ringo Starr reveals his thoughts on The Beatles' 'Now and Then' Ringo Starr chats with USA TODAY's Melissa Ruggieri about his "brothers" in The Beatles and the band's final song "Now and Then." John Lennon and Paul McCartney were each other's favorite audience. That was plainly clear as the besotted Beatles bantered, bickered and obsessed over the 23 years they were friends and rivals. Ian Leslie's new biography 'John & Paul: A Love Story in Songs' (Celadon, 436 pp., out now) unpacks their intense and complicated relationship from their first meeting in 1957 to Lennon's murder in 1980. Along the way, there's psychoanalysis (Leslie specializes in writing about human psychology, communication and creativity) and the occasional hair-curling discovery. Nothing here is entirely new: Leslie relies on previously published interviews and conducted just one himself for the book, with 'Let It Be' director Michael Lindsay-Hogg. But Leslie does an extraordinary job of providing context for familiar anecdotes, and there are many that will feel surprising. Among the biggest revelations: Four Beatles movies out in 2028: See who's cast to play music legends Paul McCartney planned to pursue a solo career if The Beatles never hit it big. When the Fab Four signed their contract with manager Brian Epstein in 1961, Paul requested a clause allowing Epstein to split up the artists 'so that they shall perform as separate individual performers.' Epstein's assistant, Alistair Taylor, recalled Paul saying he would go solo if things didn't work out with the band. John and Paul wrote songs together for years, but kept that a secret until Brian Epstein became their manager. The two friends started collaborating on songs almost as soon as they met, scribbling lyrics and chords in a notebook with every entry emblazoned: 'ANOTHER LENNON-McCARTNEY ORIGINAL.' But their efforts remained private until they revealed they were songwriters at their second meeting with Epstein, who responded with enthusiasm. So they introduced a few of their own compositions onstage at the Cavern Club to test the waters. George Harrison contributed to many Lennon-McCartney compositions, but they decided to shut him out when legalizing their partnership. As the Beatles prepared to release their first single, with the original songs 'Love Me Do' and 'P.S. I Love You,' Epstein drew up a publishing agreement formalizing the Lennon-McCartney partnership. 'It was an option to include George in the songwriting team,' McCartney is quoted as saying. But Paul asked John, ' 'Should three of us write or would it be better to keep it simple?' We decided we'd just keep to the two of us.' 'It's not clear that George and Ringo were even told about this second contract,' Leslie writes. But 'George certainly noticed its effect.' Paul McCartney suggested the title of John Lennon's first book. Their collaborations weren't limited to songs. When Lennon published 1964's 'In His Own Write,' a nonsensical collection of short stories, poems and drawings, the book's clever name was proposed by McCartney. 'Yesterday,' one of Paul McCartney's most beloved songs, was shrugged off as album filler in England. Beatles producer George Martin broached releasing 'Yesterday' as a McCartney solo record, a recommendation shot down by Epstein. The song wasn't completed in time to appear in 'Help!' so it was simply stuck on the movie's soundtrack. Then fate stepped in: Capitol Records decided to make the song the band's new single in America, where it sold a million copies the first week. John felt rejected by Paul after India, and Yoko Ono speculated the reason might have been sexual. After The Beatles' botched trip to India to seek enlightenment with the Maharishi in 1968, John returned home with the realization he was in love with artist Yoko Ono but also visibly angry with Paul. Lennon himself never spoke of a falling-out point in their relationship at that time, but Ono sensed he felt wounded. Years later, in an interview with biographer Philip Norman, she controversially theorized that John might have been rejected sexually by Paul. 'John said that no one ever hurt him the way Paul hurt him,' Ono told Norman. 'There was something going on here, from his point of view, not from Paul's … I couldn't help wondering what it was really about.' In 2015, Ono said John found men attractive, but 'they would have to be not just physically attractive, but mentally very advanced, too. And you can't find people like that.' John Lennon wondered if 'Imagine' was as good as 'Yesterday.' After writing the song in 1971 on his grand piano at Tittenhurst Park, his home with Ono, Lennon played 'Imagine' for DJ Howard Smith and asked what he thought. When Smith confirmed it was 'beautiful,' John pressed, 'But is it as good as 'Yesterday'?' John and Paul's friendship ran hot and cold until the end. They always found their way back to each other, but the missed opportunities are sickening: In 1977, a year after they'd last seen each other in person, Paul called John from a hotel not far from Lennon's home at the Dakota to see if they could get together. 'What for?' John replied with annoyance, and the conversation ultimately ended with McCartney abruptly hanging up on him. Denny Laine, who was in the studio working with a devastated Paul the morning after Lennon's death in 1980, remembered him vowing: 'I'm never going to fall out with anybody again in my life.'
New York Times
03-04-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Beatlemania: A Penetrating New Book Celebrates Lennon and McCartney
In our culture, music is most often written about in terms of sales, streams and chart positions. That is, of course, the least intelligent way to think about or talk about music. Ian Leslie's 'John & Paul: A Love Story in Songs' is unconcerned with all that, but rather it explores the way two extraordinarily gifted young men combined and exchanged their gifts while inspiring, challenging, teaching and learning from each other. In the great teams of composers before John Lennon and Paul McCartney — Rodgers and Hart, Lerner and Loewe, Leiber and Stoller, Bacharach and David — one of the members wrote the music and the other wrote the lyrics. John and Paul both wrote music and both wrote lyrics, and they made a decision at the beginning of their collaboration to share the credit on all of their compositions, thereby creating a third being called Lennon and McCartney. That selfless, generous merger, as their egos shape-shifted into and out of each other, unleashed a power that took music to a height that has not since been surpassed, or I think it safe to say, even reached. I fell in love with rock 'n' roll music when I was 9 years old in 1957 and first heard 'Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On,' by Jerry Lee Lewis. I clearly remember rolling around on the floor laughing at the explosion of freedom and joy in that recording, and in that moment I thought that that was how I wanted to spend my life. By 1960, however, the rock 'n' roll explosion had faded away. Buddy Holly was killed in a plane crash. Elvis Presley was in the Army. Chuck Berry was in jail. Eddie Cochran died in a car wreck. Little Richard was in the ministry. Jerry Lee Lewis had been canceled. Rock 'n' roll seemed at a dead end. Three years later, however, these two young musicians and their friends George Harrison and Ringo Starr, all from a seaport in the north of England, reinvented a style of music that had come from the backwaters of the Mississippi Delta, the highlands of the Appalachian Mountains and the mean streets of our cities. In the next five years, while absorbing and combining the art and music of the rest of the 20th century, they made music that took us all on an exquisite trip into other worlds of sound and meaning in a feat of invention that seems and is, I think, superhuman. Though there has probably never been music that has permeated and elevated mass culture to a higher degree, this book is not interested in music as a mass commodity. This book is about soul, about grief and most of all about love — the love that two boys who lost their mothers far too soon have for each other, the courageous way they merge and the unfathomable power of that merger. Leslie, a British journalist and author, has a deep affection for, and a penetrating understanding of, these complex characters and their unprecedented friendship — from their boyhoods in Liverpool, through the debauchery of postwar-Hamburg night life, through their lightning rise to international fame, through the remarkable string of albums with the explosive innocence of 'With the Beatles' in 1963, the jubilant rockabilly of 'Beatles for Sale' in 1964, the cannabis-fueled 'Rubber Soul' in 1965, the epic psychedelia of 'Revolver' in 1966 and 'Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band' in 1967 — which, perhaps inevitably, ended in acrimony not long thereafter. Having lived through that period of time myself, it is stunning to follow Leslie's insights into how far and fast John and Paul traveled, how profound their preternatural alliance was, and how epic their heroic journey. I'm sorry John isn't here to read this book. I hope if Paul does read it he feels the depth of appreciation and gratitude and intelligence it contains. There is a passage about them being high on LSD, after recording the song 'Getting Better' during the 'Sgt. Pepper's' sessions, that seems to me central to Leslie's understanding of his subjects: One plus one equals two unless you are counting, say, drops of water, in which case one plus one can equal one, or it can equal a fine mist. In 'John & Paul: A Love Story in Songs,' one plus one equals eternity.
